Nico González is one of the FC Barcelona academy players who have landed on their feet in the first team. In a difficult season for the Blaugrana team, both in sporting and financial terms, there have been several La Masía ‘favorite students’ who have stepped forward to end up becoming key pieces of the team led by Xavi Hernández. Fran González has spoken precisely about the quarry and the management model of Barça’s young promises. The historic Deportivo de la Coruña player, now also known for being the father of Nico González, has given an interview to ESPN in which he says that “Barça educates you within a model, a philosophy. It gives you a way of understanding the game. If you don’t have the conditions, it’s difficult to play there. The players at La Masía know exactly what to do in their positions, especially in the middle.”
In the case of Nico and Gavi, two of the main bastions of this new culé generation, Fran affirms that “they are children who have been educated in the positional game. Nico, being tall and strong, gives you the feeling of being a different player. But if you watch his games, if you go to YouTube, you’ll see his controls, how he moves the ball, how he guides it…”.
Although Nico González, at 20, already has 27 appearances for the first team, his beginnings in the world of football could have been completely different. “It was easy for the kid to go to Barcelona. We could go to Madrid or Barcelona and he chose Barça. Well, he and his mother chose Barcelona! He had offers from all sides, very important, a lot of money, but his dream was to play for Barcelona. It was a great sacrifice for his brothers, who did not want to go to Barcelona, but the dream came true this season”, recognizes Fran González in ESPN.
The former Depor player also says that, despite the fact that at the age of 6 Nico was not interested in or wanted to play football, “one day he came and without knowing why, but he started playing”. Regarding his beginnings, he also places special emphasis on the tournament that marked a before and after. Still as a Galician Montañeros player, Nico González faced FC Barcelona and Real Madrid in Galicia. “That game against Barça was decisive to say, ‘My God! We have a player here.”says his father. Some beginnings that were also marked by his growth: “When she was 15 years old he grew 25 centimeters and did not have much strength. I worked at City and when I went to see him I saw him very tall and thin. It was his worst moment, by far.”.
A “different” generation
But Nico González is not the only one who is attracting the attention of locals and strangers. In Gavi’s case, ESPN collects an anecdote from his first coach at Los Palacios, before joining the Barça academy: “The way he carried the ball was not normal. You could teach him, but it was innate. I told my daughter: ‘I’m going to keep the record because she’s going to play in the First Division’. She told me: ‘Dad, she is only six years old’ and I replied: ‘You’ll see’ and I still have the file on her “.
And from the natural talent of the Sevillian midfielder to the intelligence of the Moroccan winger. Abde, whose irruption in the first team of FC Barcelona was caused by the arrival of Xavi Hernández to the Camp Nou bench, is also another of the culés academy players of which wonders are spoken about his beginnings. “He started playing in a neighborhood team in Elche and one of his coaches asked us for a test. We put him in B, but it was difficult for him to start because he did not have that culture (of training). He was a street player, very smart, but it wasn’t easy at first.”says Palomino, former director of the Hércules quarry.
Likewise, Alberto Moreno, former coach of Hércules, affirms about Abde that “no one doubts his talent. As I saw him, I noticed something different from what you see of the kids from the quarries. They are educated tactically, positionally… Abde was a kid who had played in the street with people older than him. He has something different.”